Star Trek Book News Roundup

Catch up on current releases, and put together your checklist for the next ten months of Trek Literature with our Book News Roundup following the cut.

October-December Releases

Dayton Ward’s coda to the Star Trek: Vanguard series, “In Tempest’s Wake”, is now available as an eBook.

David Mack’s Cold Equations trilogy begins later this month with “The Persistence of Memory”. TrekMovie’s copy has already been broken open, so look for our review in the next few weeks. Books two and three of the trilogy, “Silent Weapons” and “The Body Electric” are due out in November and December respectively.

The release date for the eagerly anticipated “Federation: The First 150 Years” has been delayed until December 4 – just in time for holiday gift-giving.

2013 Releases

Early 2013 promises to be heavy with Original Series stories as the marketing buzz and buildup to the release of “Star Trek Into Darkness” in May. (Please note that the following street dates are based on current information, and may change before publication.)

January 29 – Star Trek: The Original Series “Allegiance in Exile” David R. George III A rich, fertile, temperate planet with no life signs, but with the evidence of past life attracts the attention of Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, but evidence of sabotage leaves the Enterprise crew seeking answers, and exploring the possibility of a new alien threat.

February 26 – Star Trek: The Original Series “Devil’s Bargain” Tony Daniel

When a Federation mining colony faces an extinction-level event, an irrational desire to remain behind prompts Spock to suggest an unorthodox alliance to resolve the crisis.

March 26 – Star Trek: The Original Series “The Weight of Worlds” Greg Cox

An extra-galactic threat brings Kirk, Spock, and Sulu to a remote colony; but the entire Federation may be at risk from the ways of the Coven.

March 26 – Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Stuff of Dreams” James Swallow eBook Format Only. No data is available at this time concerning the story.

April 30 – Star Trek: The Original Series “The Folded World” Jeff Mariotte

The Enterprise responds to a Starfleet vessel’s distress call, only to find it trapped (and many others) in an odd spatial distortion which appears, from the outside at least, to have a single enormous vessel at its center.

This will be Foster’s second straight movie novelization, coming on the heels of his work with the 2009 feature’s prose adaptation.

May 28 – Star Trek: The Original Series “The Shocks of Adversity” William Leisner

Author William Leisner shares with me that the book is currently in-process, and describes it as “an Original Series adventure set during the five year mission.” Leisner also confirms that, in spite of the current Amazon status which lists it as an eBook, this will be offered in print format as well.

August 27 – Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Untitled (Book #5 in series). No data is available at this time concerning the story.

I am so glad to see TOS back on the schedule in recent years. We had a long drought with nothing, particularly nothing from the 5YM era. For a while I was forced to reread books from deep in my collection when I wanted to get my TOS fix.

#1- I’m sure they will. They seem to be falling into a pattern of more standalone and TOS stories at the beginning of the year and then continuing the ongoing 24th century storyline in the late summer and fall.

Looks very ONLY TOS next year. I dont see a SINGLE book in this 2013 lineup thats for DS9, TNG, VOY, ENT. I admit its good to see some TOS books, but I’d like to see some more DS9 and VOY books too! All this tells me is that there won’t be any.

Too bad that not a single new Star Trek book by Judith Reeves-Stevens, and Garfield Reeves-Stevens is being released or planned to be released.

Novels like “Federation”, “Prime Directive” and the book series with William Shanter were not only amazing stories but they have this tendency to respect continuity and connect little dots in the Star Trek universe.

I’m thrilled to see new TOS books coming out. We’ve had so little for so long…, and with the movie coming out, it’s fitting… However, the descriptions seem less detailed than those posted on Pocketbooks’ website (maybe 2 years ago?), and I don’t think they are the same stories that were listed (and later, disappeared).

MJ…? (You posted a list not so long ago; though I’m not sure that was even a close replica of the one I’d seen at Pocket.)

13- Stories that were listed and disappeared 2 years ago? Are you talking about the TOS novels set in the 2009 movie universe?

Yeah, Paramount pulled the plug on those, for some reason. They were completed and ready to print, but now they’re gone and probably never coming back. They decided to go a different direction with the JJ-movie universe novels. The Starfleet Academy novel series mentioned here is the new JJ Abrams movie universe novel series.

The other TOS books listed here are all prime universe novels. (Which is what I prefer, actually.)

I think with the canned novels, Pocket and the authors just came up with stuff in the movie era, but set after the movie, with no input from Bad Robot. I think someone at Paramount (er rather CBS) wanted the Bad Robot team to have more input on stuff set in that universe (?), particularly stuff that takes place AFTER the movie, so they went with YA prequel novels set at the Academy, instead. The decision came from CBS, the Bad Robot people said they had nothing to do with it.

Anyhow that’s all I know. It was discussed to death on the trek lit forums when it happened.

Thanks for the info., Bobby, depressing as it is. I’d looked forward to those novels. They sounded much more interesting than what’s coming, as described in this article, but I’m hopeful… The article descriptions aren’t fleshed out, so they seem flat. I’d have bought most of the novels from the original plan, and will buy several of these, too. As for the Academy stories, my understanding is that they’re geared toward teens or tweens. Not sure how well they’re selling. I couldn’t even find them at B&N, where I’d seen them before. I’m interested in seeing the crew move forward, not in reading about cafeteria crushes before they all knew each other.

Who knows what the story is on those cancelled stories — but if it was to prevent stories that will either alter the ST09 continuity, or exist completely outside it — like a few of those awful novels written right after TMP and in the early years of TNG — well, then I support it.

Die-hard Trek fans are familiar with prime-universe novels that don’t follow TOS etc. continuity and which have a very, er, original take on characters, their pasts and technology — but it might confuse fans of ST09 to read a novel that is potentially invalid, irrelavent or even contradictory as part of the larger ST09 story arc.

I still regret reading that terrible Alan Dean Foster Star Wars book — splinter of the mind’s eye — when I was eight. It’s the reason I wouldn’t read Foster’s Trek 09 novelization (that and some lousy books I’d read of his, also when I was 8 or 9, based on the TAS episodes). Not sure why, but I really don’t like the guy’s writing — and he gets things wrong. Or at least he did 30 years ago. I may have to get over this.

And, the quality of those new novels may have been shitty.

If Bad Robot is involved, I wouldn’t blame ’em — they should be involved in any ST09 novels, just like they are with the comics…

By the way, Morgan Gendel is still doing that Outer Light web-comic @ http://journeytotheinnerlight.com/outerlight/page1.php They’re now on their 11th. One more chapter left to go. Unless there’s something incredible in the final chapter, I don’t think the story needs to exist. Although TNG had plenty of sequel episodes, so this one might have fit in.

Also digging through Trek stuff online, I found Jammer’s reviews is still going — he’s now going through TNG. He has some good points about the Trek movies, especially Trek 09, TWOK and the worst TNG movies (where the actors were out of character and, usually, “having a blast” during filming). He has a great line in there somewhere about how he’s uncomfortable with fans obsessing over Gene’s Vision — Gene’s vision was to make a TV show, and at the time he had a pretty optimistic view of the future.

The 4 Abramsverse novels may be released someday, maybe after Into Darkness comes out. I’m sure we’ll see more TNG, DS9 novels (likely tied into the Typhon Pact), as well as Voyager novels.

I hope to see Titan novels too. They actually have been pretty good. I’m not at all confident in seeing Enterprise novels though. Pocketbooks seems to have closed the door on that series now (though, as I keep adding, a Tales of the Romulan War would be welcome to fill in the missing gaps from the rush job they did with the last Romulan War novel).